In 1965, the Highway Beautification Act became a federal law in the United States. It is also known as the “Lady Bird Johnson Act,” after the president’s wife, Lady Bird Johnson, who was a fervent supporter of improving the nation’s highways. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it into law.
The act created federal guidelines for the regulation of outdoor advertising as well as for the augmentation, upkeep, and planting of vegetation alongside the country’s highways.
It also stipulated the removal of litter, other visual obstructives, and offensive advertising from the rights-of-way of federally assisted highways.
It mandated the removal of some existing billboards that were within 660 feet of the edge of the main traveled way of any federally assisted primary or interstate highway and prohibited the construction of new billboards within that distance. The program was established under which the states could apply for federal cash to remove or relocate billboards that were regarded to be unsuitable or visually disturbing or that did not comply with the act’s criteria. States receiving financing under this program were expected to contribute a percentage of the federal monies in matching payments and to uphold the provisions of the act inside their own borders. Under the act, states were allowed to permit certain types of on-premise signs (signs advertising a business or service located on the same property where the sign is located) along the highways, provided that they met the size and spacing requirements.
The state was in charge of seeing that a sign was promptly taken down or moved if it was found to be in violation of the act’s specifications. Some sign owners may have sued to stop the removal or relocation of their signs, claiming that the terms of the act violated their First Amendment rights. However, the act has typically been supported as a legitimate use of the government’s authority to control how people utilize public property and to advance the interests of the general public’s safety and aesthetics.
A large number of the removed advertising signs were either scrapped, repurposed (typically for the farming business), placed in garbage heaps in the forests, thrown in junkyards, or buried underground. These signs are being found to this day in areas where they were discarded. Even in off-grade condition they still have value to the collecting community.
Below are a few examples of the signs affected by this act:
